Humble | Obedient

Hello and thank you for joining us on the Sierra Bible Church Sermon of the Week.

We hope you enjoy this message by Pastor Nate Leverett.

One more week talking about what does it look like for us to kind of reorient, if you will, our lives under the authority of Jesus for the common good.

So three weeks in, I know we haven't all been here, so let's go through some uh questions.

Some of these I want you to answer maybe either out loud or just by way of a hand raising, but this will kind of get us going, I hope, uh, in some things that God's been teaching us.

First question is this why is humility so hard to work on?

A couple things that we've sort of explored together.

Part of it might be that because I get so proud being humble.

Like I can actually get proud.

What if we get really good at it?

Sort of self-defeating, right?

Some of you maybe you thought to yourself, like, I got this humility thing nailed.

Others maybe think, you know, I'm not all that humble.

But if I'm honest, I'm probably the most humble person I know.

I mean, I just want to be honest, right?

It's kind of part of the thing.

My ego loves, Nate explored this last week.

If you weren't here for the message, I'd encourage you to go to the YouTube channel or our podcast to hear Nate's message.

My ego loves to be praised and needs to be judged.

One of the things the scriptures talk about is that once our souls were vacated by the presence of a good God as a result of sin, they become a kind of vacuum.

Others have talked about that sort of vacuum, that ego, that place, kind of like a balloon.

Maybe you've heard this if you've uh read some of these folks, and they talk about this idea, maybe you've even said it, that that person is sort of self-inflating.

So if we give ourselves a picture of that, right?

It's like they're doing what?

They're puffing themselves up.

They're saying, I have in me a place that loves to be praised, and on the other side of that same coin needs to be judged.

I need to know I'm okay.

I need to know I'm in the top 51%.

I some of us live this life, right?

And we know life does this, life does that.

And so one of two things happen for the balloon-inflated proud person.

Somebody comes along with something pokey and does what?

Pow! We've been there.

Maybe it's a health diagnosis, maybe it's a financial loss.

Maybe you crashed your beautiful new car into the whatever it is, right?

Gets pop.

The other thing that happens is we feel the air going out, and so we feel like we've got to blow into it and fill it up and pump up everyone around us, including ourselves.

The another challenge, I think this is, I'm gonna own this as a guy for sure, but I I don't grow in humility by trying to be more humble.

Most challenges we face in life, men, we face the challenge head on.

Okay, we don't need to have long conversations about it.

We don't need to read the owner's instruction.

We just need to know okay, God opposes the proud, gives favor to the humble.

Let's just be humble, let's figure it out, let's go.

That doesn't work with humility.

We don't become more humble by trying to become more humble, it makes it a bit of a challenge.

A couple other questions.

Will a humble woman or man think less of themselves?

I was asked after the first service by a gentleman that's here.

He said, Can I be, Dave, great and humble?

Because I got great nailed.

I'm pretty sure that's what Dave was thinking.

But but what does it look like to actually be humble?

And is the answer simply thinking less of myself?

Woe is me.

Sort of that weird, apologetic, not all that humble, evasive kind of right.

C.

S.

Lewis said it this way, and it captures part of the answer, I think, to what humility looks like in us.

He said that humility isn't thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less.

So that's part of it.

I will think of myself less.

That's not the whole piece.

Part of what we're gonna look at today is trying to answer this question is humility a choice?

It's a sort of a state of being, or is it actually a choice?

By raise, how many think yes, it's a choice?

You can choose to be humble.

Some of you, some of you are like, I'm not paying attention at all, so I'm not raising my hand.

So we're gonna kind of look at it at what that looks like.

Is it more doing or more being?

Maybe you've heard the quip or you've seen it on the t-shirt, and I think there's some insight in this when we think about humility.

But one author said it this way they said, I want to be humble enough to know that I'm replaceable, and wise enough to know there's nobody else like me.

I mean, that sort of balances what the biblical teaching around humility is.

There's no one like you.

God created you.

Now you may look in the mirror and go, ah, thank God there's no one else like me.

But you were created for this space, for this time.

You're fearfully and wonderfully made.

Like we need that in our bones, we need it flowing through our blood.

But guess what?

When you're done, you're getting replaced.

You're getting replaced.

And so, how do I balance those two kinds of things?

How do I live out of this greatness, as God calls me, in the midst of a world where I am replaceable?

I've been kind of searching for definitions around what humility or humble looks like.

Uh Jesus is our best picture, by the way, which is where we started.

And here's, I think, a decent uh way of thinking about uh humility.

Oh, wait.

He did Dave show my grandkid?

Dave, I was skipping the grandkid this service.

Dave was like, I don't care, I'm putting the grandkid up there.

So, okay, we'll go back to my grandkid, right?

What I said first service was this.

David was on point.

I said, it's hard sometimes being great and humble.

I started then with this other phrase about a book that every high school kid could write.

No offense if you're in high school.

But the book is titled something like How to Be Humble When Everything You Ever Do is Right.

Or when you receive a gift like my grandson, my perfect little boy, who's in Texas.

We went and visited him, and so I we showed a picture for service.

So I said, because people were asking, I said, Well, we'll show one little picture of him.

That's Cairo, our first grandson, and he is a rock star.

It's hard to not talk about him all the time and show multiple pictures.

So I said I'd show one.

There you go.

There's Cairo.

Thank you, Dave, for bringing us back.

Uh, a definition about humility.

Uh, here we go.

So, this is a fill-in in your outline if you want to kind of walk through that.

Humility is viewing all that you are through the lens of grace.

It's hard.

It's hard to just have someone look at you in the face.

I've done this to multiple people these three weeks.

What does it mean to be humble?

What is a definition for humility?

And I have gotten a different answer slightly from every single person I've asked.

So there's that what that tells me, and I'm asking smart people, that there's some nuance to what it looks like to be humble.

But humility is viewing all that you are through the lens of grace.

What is grace?

Grace is unmerited favor, grace's unmerited, unearned favor, goodness, blessing.

And so humility is viewing all of life as someone that receives.

Nate kind of walked through this last week.

All of life, all that I have, all that I am, through the lens of grace.

It's from God and it's for his glory.

It's from God, it's a gift.

I receive it for the needs of others.

It's from God and for the common good.

It's much more about doing than it is some, you know, cross your legs, levitate into a state of humility.

Paul knows this, the author of Philippians and much of our New Testament.

And he actually uses, we started here a couple of weeks ago, um, humility, specifically Jesus' choice to be humble, as the answer for this community and Philippi to sort out its relationships.

So if you've ever been crossed with someone, if you ever think I may get into a wonky relationship at some point, Paul would say that relationship is sideways because of that relationship can be healed if there is one thing.

Paul points to this one thing, it is humility.

He says that's the problem.

Somebody's priding up, someone's thinking of themselves first, someone's putting themselves first, someone's valuing their opinion higher than the others.

You need humility.

What he'll say today, in kind of, I think, a fascinating and beautiful kind of way, is that humility isn't just the key to our relationships working as much as we value and need that, humility is also the key.

And what humility looks like to any of us finding the will of God and doing it.

He said, at the basis to any of our kind of relationships with God, whether or not we hear from God and act obediently will be based on just one thing.

You know what it is?

It's not true, question.

Humility, humility, humility.

So that's where we're going, and that's where we'll walk together.

If you have your Bible, uh, open it up to Philippians chapter two.

Now, maybe you don't crack it every week in here uh because we also will put it on the screen, but there's something I want to kind of highlight as we get further down into this.

And so I'd love for you to have your uh Bible open.

We're in Philippians chapter two.

I'm gonna start again by uh just kind of reading the intro to Paul's um message about humility, specifically in Jesus.

And so he's gonna start focused on their relationships, and then he's gonna blow this thing apart by reciting what was most likely a song or poem that the Christian communities, when they would gather in homes early on, would recite together.

So it was kind of their their mantra, if you will, or their way of focusing their hearts and their minds on who God is and what he had done in Jesus.

So we pick up the story as he's kind of helping them in their relationships uh here in verse three.

Verse three says this in humility, value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests, but each of you to the interests of others.

In your relationships with one another, if you want to sort these out, if you want them to be healthy, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus, who, being in very nature God, we walked through this a couple of weeks ago, did not consider equality, all of his advantages, something to be used to his own advantage.

Rather, he made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness, and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself.

He humbled himself.

Sounds like a choice that you and I can make by becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.

And as what you can see here is he's celebrating the gospel that God came and bore human flesh so that he could go to the cross, so that when he died on the cross, our sin would actually stick to his physical body.

He would die for it, we would with him experience resurrection and life, because he's paid for our sin.

It's been stuck to the cross and died with him.

That's the good news of the gospel.

That's what we receive when we receive Christ.

Now, this word he says, this fascinating little part, if you're studying with me, it's verse 8.

He says, He became obedient.

Or excuse me, he yeah, he humbled himself and he became Jesus obedient.

This word obedience only used three times in the scriptures.

We're gonna look at two of them uh today.

One of those times is right here.

He says he became obedient.

Now, what Jesus didn't do was kind of weigh out in the process, right and wrong, and decide which one he was gonna do.

Like that's sometimes what obedience looks like for us, right?

It's like which is the right thing, which is the wrong thing, and then am I going to choose to do the right thing?

Jesus wasn't making that same choice.

What Jesus was doing, and this is why this word obedience is unique, the way Paul uses it in the early church quoted it here.

For them, obedience, the word he chooses here is attentive listening.

Okay?

It's it's like listening in, it's paying close attention, it's leaning in.

There's a sense of understanding.

The obedience part is just written in, like the action part is just written.

That's gonna happen if you hear clearly.

Okay, so Jesus isn't which one's right?

What Jesus is saying, what is the will of the Father?

Because I've already decided to do that.

I've already emptied myself.

I've already chosen to become a servant.

The question is, what does it look like to be a servant?

When Jesus tells, or when the father tells me that, the answer's already what?

Yes.

It's already pre-approved.

I'm in, right?

It's like I tattooed it on my arm.

So when Jesus speaks, I don't have to wonder.

Yes, no, yes, the question, the answer is yes.

This is what it looks like, but he says he became obedient, he listened, he understood what the father wanted.

Now, here's what he's going to do in this text.

Now, if you have a Bible that's like mine, one of these little kind of thin-ish ones, uh, it's probably broken up into a lot of different sections.

Each of these little sections, and these aren't like God ordained, right?

Because this is just a letter that's written to a church, but but the authors try and go through and help us by breaking up the whole text or letter into sections.

This is one of those places.

Hopefully, this doesn't sound too proud.

I think they got it wrong in my Bible, the way they broke it up.

And I'll show you why.

And this will help us kind of understand what Paul's trying to get at for us.

Okay, so here's the relationship stuff Paul invites us into.

Here's what it looks like for Jesus to humble himself, becoming obedient to death.

This is the mindset required to A work out relationships among us, and B, find and fulfill the will of God for us.

Now, Jesus humbled himself by becoming obedient.

Verse 9, therefore, now, whenever you see this, therefore, that's pointing us back to a point that was just made.

So, therefore, God, talking about the Father, exalted him, Jesus, to the highest place.

He gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth.

We're going to walk through a lot of this as we study Revelation together.

And every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

Jesus humbled himself, he became obedient.

The Father, in that obedience, raises him up.

This is what this looks like if we were going to turn it or actually ask AI to turn it into a grasp for us.

Here we go.

This is what Jesus did.

He didn't grasp it.

His advantage wasn't for his advantage.

He empties himself, he becomes obedient to death.

It's at that place as he lowers himself that God gets a hold of Jesus and says, Here we go.

God exalts him to the highest place.

God gives him the name above all names.

This is the therefore for Jesus.

It's also the end of this little section that says imitating Christ's humility in my Bible.

I don't think it should be.

The next section kind of goes in a little bit of a different direction.

But look at verse 12.

Verse 12, Jesus had his therefore, God found him in that place of humility and exalted him.

This is not why we humble ourselves, right?

We don't humble ourselves so that God will get a hold of us and make a name out of our lives so that everyone will bow down and worship us.

We clear on that?

That's Jesus, not Nate.

Nate, therefore, is coming here.

He says, Therefore, my dear friends, he leans in to these people, kind of out of this teaching, he says, but dear friends, he says, but but people I love.

But people that have faced persecution with me.

But people that have met Jesus, the people that have been in the in the river baptizing together.

Dear friends, as you have always what?

Help me out.

As you have always obeyed, what's Paul doing?

Paul's saying, here's a therefore.

It's tied to this thing, obedience.

And what he's doing, he's looping us back up to what Jesus did when he humbled himself by becoming obedient.

So Jesus' humility came by way of obedience.

It was the core to what his humility looked like.

It was the key to his exaltation.

Our humility, the core, is also rooted in obedience.

It's in our listening for the voice and the heart and the will of the Father with a predetermined yes.

A predetermined yes.

Here's what he says.

Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed, Paul says, not only when I was there, but how much more in my absence?

If you know their story, there's repetitive times where they acted obediently.

Continue, he says, continue in your obedience.

Continue to take the truth of the word of God and work it into the choices you make on a daily basis.

He says, continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling.

For, and here's where the really good news comes: for it is God who works in you.

For when you choose the path of humility in your obedience, God doesn't just leave you out there to like figure it out on your own strength.

He says, Well, what you realize in that process is actually God working in you.

God comes alongside.

As we talked about before, man, we hoist the sails, God fills them.

He says, For it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill His purpose.

Obedience is the core of our humility and the basis of our participation with God in fulfilling his good story.

As I said, this word obedience is used a couple of three times in the scriptures.

The other one that kind of stands out that I want to draw our attention to, because I think it's helpful to understand what Paul's inviting us into, comes by way of a sermon that a guy by the name of Stephen is preaching.

So Stephen is one of the early disciples, the early followers of Jesus.

And in Acts 7, he preaches a sermon as a Jew to a bunch of Jews to invite them to put their faith in Jesus.

And he's going to kind of go after their non-obedience.

Okay, so what we're going to see is here's a picture.

This is what Stephen's saying to his fellow Jews.

Here's what the opposite of humility looked like.

And quite frankly, when I read through this and was studying it and was thinking back through the story, it's like actually that story looks a lot more like my life than Philippians chapter 2.

Philippians 2 · chapter mention

But it gives us some handles on how do we repent, how do we listen in a kind of obedient sort of way.

So Stephen's preaching the sermon.

The sermon's all about Jesus, but he draws them back into their past.

And it's almost like kind of a silly story now.

And they would have all known this.

They would have gotten taught the story when they were kids.

So they all kind of knew it.

And as a Jew, it came with a sort of, oh yeah.

Oh yeah, that was part of our story.

It's a story that if you were in, you know, grew up in the church, maybe you know it.

You probably do.

It's actually in Exodus chapter 30 and 32, if you want to go back to it.

Exodus 30 · chapter mention

It's a story where God gets the nation of Israel, his people, out of slavery in Egypt.

So they're more bricks, less straw, they're doing their thing, they're working, they're slavery, they're slaves under Egypt.

God comes in after this time of actually.

Making them prosperous under slavery.

It's a beautiful thing.

Pulls them out by way of these ten plagues, so that eventually the Pharaoh will let his people go.

Remember, some of us sing the song.

And as a part of those ten plagues, they watch God do incredible miracles.

After this, eventually the Pharaoh lets them go.

And the nation of Israel is leaving.

And the Pharaoh's like, wait a minute, we got to go get them back.

So they chase after them.

They run into this huge body of water known as the Red Sea.

Some of you are there.

They hit this red huge body of water.

They're getting chased down by uh the Egyptians, and they're like, What do we do now?

And Moses is like, I have no idea.

We left with a promise that God would be faithful.

We left with a promise that God would take care of us if we trusted him.

And so Moses chooses in this moment to trust and to lean on God.

And God eventually opens these waters, they march through to their freedom.

In that freedom and the faithful promise of God, which they've experienced in some radical ways, they have to wait because God's getting them ready to move into the promised land.

And so Moses goes up on a mountain, it's called Mount Sinai, and he goes up there and he gets really the law as a whole, but he gets the Ten Commandments, right?

The ten big guys are in there too.

And it's in that setting of the nation waiting, Egypt's right back there, but we've seen God's hand of faithfulness, and we're trying to follow him that Stephen draws their attention back because some particularly wild and maybe even inconsistent with what we think.

Well, that's not what I would have done.

Choices are made.

So here's where Stephen goes.

Sounds a little bit of a long setup, but I find this incredibly helpful.

He says, But our ancestors, this is Stephen teaching, refused to obey him.

This is Moses.

He's the picture of God's leadership in their lives.

Instead, so we refused to obey who God had put in charge.

Instead, they rejected Moses, God by extension.

And then listen to what Stephen says.

And in their hearts, like, yeah, they rejected him, but it was in their hearts really what was going on.

And their hearts turned back to Egypt.

Like they'd seen God work, they'd seen him be faithful, they heard his promise.

But man, Egypt was right back there.

And so they turned back.

Then Aaron, they told Aaron, Aaron's uh Moses' brother.

So Moses goes on the mountain, Aaron's left to kind of you know herd the sheep, if you will.

Then it gets really wild.

Read the story.

There's some fun stuff in there.

Make us gods, they say, who will go before us.

We want a God that will do what we want.

This idea that we have to sort of live in some version of humility doing what God wants, like we're done.

And this is like probably 15 days into the story.

Moses has been gone, but 15 days can feel like a long time, as can a few moments.

As for this fellow Moses, who led us out of Egypt, we don't even know what's happened to him.

Like God clearly is not going to be faithful because he like Moses has been gone for like a long time now, Aaron.

So, how about we make our own God?

And all of us have these seasons, all of us have these moments, all of these have these places where we maybe I'll just turn back.

Wasn't that bad?

Wasn't as hard as this, we don't know where.

And they turn back.

Listen to what uh Stephen has to say about these people.

And think about doesn't this remind you at least of some season or time in your life, maybe you're there now.

He says this, he says, you stiff-necked people.

I love the physical picture of that.

You stiff-necked people.

If you ever said to your son or your daughter, I don't think we ever had to say this to our daughters, but I'm sure it happens for some of you ladies.

But our girls, they just our boys, on the other hand, stiff-necked.

And if you want to know somebody's listening, you tell them what?

Look at me.

If you want to know they're not listening, you know they're looking somewhere else.

And so here's what he says: he says, You stiff-necked people, your hearts and your ears are still uncircumcised.

Circumcision was a physical sign of a life that was committed to the work of God.

He said, Your hearts and your ears are still, they're they're they're not committed to what God really wants.

You are just like your ancestors.

And then he says this he says, You always resist the Holy Spirit.

So when it comes right down to it, you're resistant, you're pushing back, you're trying to reinterpret.

Was there ever a prophet your ancestors did not persecute?

They even killed those who predicted the coming of the righteous one.

And now you have been betrayed, and you even murdered him.

And Stephen's like, all right, who wants to come to Jesus now that we're all in a happy mood?

And they stone him, right?

And we know the story.

He says, You guys are stiff-necked.

Your hearts are turned.

You haven't predecided your yes.

And I think as I look through my own kind of humility and lack there of, obedience and lack thereof, this rings true.

Think about these four things.

I don't think they're all have to be real harsh and sort of stiff-necked, if you will, but there's a lot of reasons we don't obey.

There's a lot of reasons we don't hear.

There's a lot of reasons we miss what God has for us.

So here's uh the first one, though, I think sometimes we're just stiff-necked and resistant.

Amen?

To the stiff-necked and resistant.

Okay?

You know, some of your parents, you told, they told you this from a young age.

You are a strong what?

Willed child.

Praise God for them.

If you're raising one, come up after service.

We'll pray for your family.

We need strong-willed kids.

I am a strong-willed kid.

My wife is strong-willed, makes for a fun marriage at times.

We need people who are strong-willed and are stiff-necked, amen, for the right kinds of things.

But they are a pain too.

Some of us are just strong or excuse me, stiff-necked and resistant when it comes to God.

We don't want him.

That's not really how I want to spend my money.

To be honest, it's not really how I want to spend my time.

Actually, I think it would it would be a lot better for me if I muscled up and fought back and defended myself, kept blowing air into the balloon.

Sometimes we're like them.

This is why I start every prayer time with repentance.

I just think start by repenting.

Like get that out of the way first.

Because I'm sure there's a whole bunch in there, right?

It's like, God, I'm sorry.

I blow it, I get stiff-necked, I chase my thing, I'm defensive.

Some of us are just that, and we need to repent.

Second thing I think that you know we see is that we're just, I mean, I don't know about you.

I didn't wake up this morning thinking, God, today would be a great day to suffer.

But suffering is part of the story.

It's certainly been part of mine and been part of yours more than probably I could imagine for many of you.

And here's the challenge, I think.

It's the challenge when Egypt is right there, whatever your Egypt is.

Because what I see so often in my life and the lives of others, and we see this in scripture over and over and over, is that we will, in our own sin, in our own disobedience, choose a known suffering over an unknown promise.

God steps in and says, I'll be faithful.

I've got you.

It's suffering down both roads, okay?

Amen.

But Jesus says, I'll be on that road with you.

We'll walk this, I'm gonna bear fruit out of my out of the suffering that you walk through.

So will you come with me?

Will you humble yourself and obey your way in to what I have for you?

There will be suffering.

The problem is though, you don't know what the promised land looks like.

You heard about giants, you heard about challenges.

And so I was thinking about this.

I was on the airplane back from Texas, you know, and it's always that thing of like, what horrible movie am I gonna watch?

We don't watch a ton of things here, but on the airplanes, I'm like, man, I'm doing however many hours.

So if it's 20 hours Africa, I've seen a lot of bad movies.

A great movie came out a long time ago.

It's named Shawshank Redemption.

Any of you guys have seen this movie?

Don't watch it with your junior high high school kids, but it's a phenomenal movie, and it's based around a number of gentlemen, Morgan Freeman, when he's younger, it's lights out acting.

They're in prison.

And they begin to understand slavery.

They understand the struggle, and getting outside those walls is a challenge.

And quite frankly, we need Jesus to help us walk through that and our church community.

That's why when people come out of the waters for baptism, man, we want you to just wrap them up and say, You're home.

Come home, we're gonna walk with you.

And it just gives this incredible picture of the fact that, man, we have to be willing to suffer together to choose the promise.

Another way, and again, these get less kind of towards the angle of stiff neck, but sometimes I just don't hear them.

I mean, if obedience is active listening, there's times when I just miss it.

Let me extend it.

There are times when we miss it.

You ever like be exercising and you like maybe a run up behind someone anymore?

Someone runs up behind me.

Timing's gotten off a bit there.

But you start having a conversation with someone, and they just keep running, and you're like, this person's weird, they're just like ignoring me.

And then you realize what?

What?

Yeah, they have these little white things stuck in their ears.

And I just wonder how many times do you and I miss hearing what God has for us because there's just other noise.

And we again, it's it's at one level.

Come on, let's just say, Jim, give me a break.

You know, retired.

I could find all the time.

And we all have this picture of him doing his devotions, going through withdrawals, right?

Like he's like reading the word of God, like coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee.

I can't wait till I get, but like it's a challenge to find that time to just empty and to listen and to be quiet.

And some of us set ourselves up to lose based on the decisions that we make.

Sometimes it's just a challenging season.

It's funny, parents will come to me and it's like, man, we we haven't, it's like we're having a challenge in our relationship with God, we're having a challenge towards each other.

I'm like, tell me about your life.

Oh, we have like a six-month-old, a two-year-old, and a four-year-old.

Like, well, hang in there.

I don't know what to tell you.

Like, it's gonna be hard, right?

This is just how life comes sometimes.

But but we don't hear them.

And so, what does it look like for me to tune in?

Because obedience doesn't happen without the hearing.

And then lastly, I think a lot of us, and we have a church full of these kinds of people, because in some ways I am one too, but I just don't understand.

Some of you are new to faith in here, and you heard a message like Jim's, and you should do this, start it through the Bible, right?

You thought this should be easy enough.

The guy gets up there, makes some sense out of it.

I'm gonna start reading it.

And you're like, what?

Ah, it doesn't make any sense.

Like this thing's weird.

Like, what?

Okay, the first three chapters make pretty good sense.

After that, you got what?

Having sex with who?

Okay, some of you haven't read it because you're not laughing, or you're like, you can't say that about the Bible.

It's challenging, okay?

We work it out together, we study other smart people, we humbly come before the word of God.

But there's some other tools that we can use.

I don't want to encourage you, if that's you, and you're like, I frankly, I don't understand it.

I want to, I love it.

The God has shown up, he pulled me out of slavery, and I'm sitting underneath the mountain.

Man, sign up for uh one of our little community groups, sign up for Rooted.

Kathy and I lead a group Sunday afternoons.

We're starting next Sunday at four.

We would love to rooted's one of the best places around here if you're new and you're like, I'm new to church, new to faith, just walking it out daily, learning how to listen, our obedience, whether or not you and I will ever find and fulfill the purposes of God for our lives, have everything to do with how we hear.

And so, what does it look like for us to hear?

Well, we want to help.

We've all needed the help.

We can walk through this together.

Okay, here's what I want to do.

In the last few minutes together, I can't believe I actually have a few minutes.

I'm thinking maybe the timer's off, but we got a little time.

So um, here's what I want to do.

Rather than leave you with like a point of application, I want to leave you with a paradigm flip.

Okay, so this is gonna get a little kind of maybe existentially.

So try and like track with me.

If this falls apart, there's plenty of meat already on the bone, I think you'll be fine.

Uh, here, when we think about humility, we think about obedience, we think about choosing our way in.

We think about why is it that when I hear from God, something else seems to rise up that reinterprets what God is trying to say and the life he's inviting me into.

What is that?

And why is that?

This is a challenge that Paul wrestled with.

He wrestled with it around this idea of our old self.

Okay, it's kind of he uses some different language, but he says, all of us have an old self.

If you've come to Christ, if you come to Christ, this scripture is very relevant to you.

Our old self was crucified with him.

So here's what Paul says we have an old self.

Last slide, David.

Great job.

Our old self is our self that was under sin, was full of corruption, and frankly woke up saying, I'm in charge, right?

I want, I need, this is Cairo.

Right?

And we just live out of that for the rest of our lives, this old self.

But what Jesus did at the cross was take my old self and what?

Next slide crucified it.

He said it's supposed to be dead.

The balloon, it's popped, it's dead.

Christ crucified it.

Paul uses 30 plus times in the scripture this paradigm.

What he wants you to understand is that your old self, this sin so corrupted me first self, is meant to be dead.

So don't resurrect it.

Don't bring it back to life, don't breathe life back into it.

30 plus times.

I'm gonna give you eight.

So track with these.

It's gonna feel overwhelming a little bit, they're short, but here's what Paul has to say he says, We are those who have what?

Died.

Now, Paul's writing this, so that's a little weird to start.

We were therefore what?

Buried with him.

This is the paradigm shift.

Through baptism into death, we're gonna get to experience this promise.

If we died with Christ, and if we died with Christ, like why are you wrestling it out if you're already dead?

Count yourselves what dead.

Okay, if you're brand new to church, come to Jesus, He'll save you, we'll walk with you.

But there's this old self in you that was meant to be crucified.

Let's keep going.

You also what died with who?

Jesus, like my old self.

It was nailed to a cross, it was killed.

One died for all, therefore, all died.

Having been, this is Paul again, buried with him.

So here's this guy, he's right.

He's like, Man, I was already buried with Jesus, like that's kind of weird.

But friends, what happened when Jesus was buried?

Right, right, it's good news.

If we died, Paul says, if we die, why are you wrestling?

Why is it a yes or no?

If really he already died, and you died with him, if indeed your old self has been crucified, listen to what Paul has to say.

Love this next verse.

He says, This anyone who has died has been set free from sin.

You know, here, again, I'm gonna get a little emotional.

The last few weeks I've done a number of funerals, uh, some amazing people.

I did one for a family that was long-term family in our church in Idaho, and I'm at this place called the Lakewood Memorial Chapel.

If you guys have been there, it's like this beautiful funeral place.

And I got there early because of scheduling, and I'm walking around, and I'm working through this series and wrestling with what Paul has to say in this paradigm shift.

And there's this place on the funeral ground.

I mean, this place is massive, thousands and thousands.

They they do like 25 funerals a day on Fridays and Saturdays, and they have this big block of like marble, and it's just slotted with bodies, right?

And so there's the little plaques, we'll all have one.

Hopefully, one day, a parent or people, kids will pay enough for us to get a little plaque, right?

And and so I just started reading them and praying, reading them and praying, reading them and praying.

And here's what Paul's inviting us to consider that inasmuch as that person has no say anymore over their life, has no fight anymore over their life, that our old self is meant to, because of what Jesus Christ has done at the cross, to be pushed into one of those marble tombs never to come out again.

Like that was meant to be left in the grave.

Leave it there.

Why are you breathing life in your disobedience back into this old self you claim is already dead?

It's just been crucified with Christ.

Nate, leave it there.

Listen to what I have for you.

Will you follow me?

Will you repent when you need to repent?

Will you clear the noise when you need to clear the noise?

Will you seek to understand when it's challenging?

It feels like you're kind of walking through a fog.

But let what's dead stay dead.

Listen to Paul's language as we ask the question, what might it look like for us to be obedient to death?

Can you throw the Galatians 2 passage and then the next one up there?

Listen to what Paul says.

He says, This I have been crucified with Christ.

Here's the good news, friends.

I no longer live.

He took all that, he buried it, he paid for it.

But Christ, and he's living in me.

What Paul says is that what you begin to understand in obedience through humility is actually that God's working in you.

Paul says, it's actually like Christ is living, not just, he's not hung on a cross, he's not these old stories.

Man, he's with me in the challenge with my wife.

He's with me in the challenge with my kids or my workplace or the world he's invited me to be in.

Next verse, and we'll end with this one.

It's beautiful.

Paul says this He says, I pro I protest, brothers and sisters, by my pride in you.

Here's what Paul is saying: because I love you so much, because I value you so highly, because I want the very, very best for you.

And there is not a world in which I get the best for you and the best for me.

He says, So, because of my pride in you, which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I what?

Die every day.

Man, if that'sn't a pretty good description of parenting, of purity, being a husband or a wife, being an employee, of what it looks like to live under the authority of a God.

So it's value the other people first.

Listen, tune your hearts, tune your ears to my words, and we'll walk this out together.

Let's pray.

God thank you.

I thank you for the incredibly good news, first and foremost.

That in dying with my old self, you have saved me.

You saved me from the punishment that my sin deserves.

You have saved me to live a life that is finding and following your good purpose worked out in relationship with you.

If there are some this morning who have never stood before the work you did on the cross and said yes, said, God, I I've been doing this my own way.

Man, I've been living the old self, but I this morning choose to surrender my old self, to let it die.

Thank you for paying for that.

God, I pray that that person would just sort of throw up the hands of their heart and just say yes to you.

God, for us that are struggling in that place, maybe of maybe you have spoken.

And maybe we are living with a little bit of stiff-necked.

God, that we would repent, that we would find the people maybe around us that we need to just share that struggle with and be carried together into your healing, God.

God, thank you that you came, that you are the most beautiful picture of humility, and that you obeyed even unto death that we might live for and with you.

God, thanks.

Such good news.

We love you, we praise you.

Help us to know when we stand between the old suffering and the new promise that you are faithful.

We pray all these things in your powerful name.

Amen.

Thanks so much for joining us, church.

We hope that you enjoyed this message.

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